By Love Refined: Letters to a Young Bride

Rating:
Summary: Get Ready to be a Wife
Review: Excellent book that prepares you to be a wife and have a healthy relationship with your spouse.

Rating:
Summary: Great Wedding or Shower Gift
Review: I received a copy of this book as a gift when I was engaged. It was an excellent way to help prepare for marriage, not just the wedding day. Now we give it to almost all the young couples we know when they get married. It is easy to read but full of excellent PRACTICAL advice on how to have a wonderful marriage. I highly recommend it!

Rating:
Summary: Ignoring marriage's real challenges
Review: While this book uses an interesting format - letters from an older mentor to a young bride - it seems to sidestep the true difficulties that married couples face. The bride, Julie, appears to have written to her penpal about various marital issues: morning crankiness, occasionally unsatisfying sex, her husband's little irritating habits such as knuckle-cracking.

How lucky we are if that's the worst it gets! How about the really tough questions? Like infidelity? Or financial stress? Or substance addiction? Or major health issues? These are all real-life problems that couples struggle with - not just deciding which social events to attend (a topic the writers discuss at length).

Maybe the book was just meant to be a sweet romp through a picture-perfect marriage. But if people are turning to the book for wisdom, its rose-tinted view of life and marriage could severely mislead newlyweds. A more realistic book might help them avoid that.

Rating:
Summary: Ignoring marriage's real challenges
Review: While this book uses an interesting format - letters from an older mentor to a young bride - it seems to sidestep the true difficulties that married couples face. The bride, Julie, appears to have written to her penpal about various marital issues: morning crankiness, occasionally unsatisfying sex, her husband's little irritating habits such as knuckle-cracking.

How lucky we are if that's the worst it gets! How about the really tough questions? Like infidelity? Or financial stress? Or substance addiction? Or major health issues? These are all real-life problems that couples struggle with - not just deciding which social events to attend (a topic the writers discuss at length).

Maybe the book was just meant to be a sweet romp through a picture-perfect marriage. But if people are turning to the book for wisdom, its rose-tinted view of life and marriage could severely mislead newlyweds. A more realistic book might help them avoid that.